“Well, love, let me give you some advice,” DI Carlson said, obviously talking down to her. Jake and I shared a glance; I had a feeling this conversation wasn’t going to end well for DI Carlson. “I’ve been with the Metropolitan Police since you were in nappies. I was at the home. I saw where the woman had been hanging, and she definitely did this to herself. I know it’s fun to think everything’s a crime, and that you get a bit of attention here and there from people with the patience to humor you, but why don’t you leave the detecting to the real detectives?”
“If you have such extensive experience with death, then how do you explain the location of the bruises on the woman’s neck?”
“What do you mean?”
“It is obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes and a half-functioning brain! The bruising on her neck is consistent with a rope, but it is far too low, and the angle is all wrong! She was strangled with the rope pulled down behind her. I expect that if you were to look at her back you would find a bruise there as well; my guess is she was lying face down, and her would-be murderer pressed a knee into her back as he strangled her.”
DI Carlson chuckled. “That is quite the vivid imagination you have there, Violet,” he told her. “But I assure you, I’ve looked at the crime scene. The victim was found hanging from the ceiling fan in her home, and she left a suicide note. Why don’t you leave the policing to the real police?”
Violet’s eyes flashed with anger. “You have given me some advice, now let me give you some of my own,” she said, standing. She wasn’t exactly tall, but the commanding way in which she stood even made DI Carlson take a step back. “Understand one thing: I am much, much better at your job than you are. You are no more than a buffoon who has evidently been promoted once too often, and I will not let your inability to develop anything remotely resembling critical thought result in a murderer being allowed to roam free. Now, you are welcome to continue to wallow in the puddle of your own ignorance, but not to the detriment of law and order in this city. Accept that what I have told you is the truth, and treat this as a homicide that I can solve for you, or when I solve this attempted murder on my own, I will ensure that your name is dragged so far into the mud that the most important duty you will ever be given in the future is to ticket drunken students urinating on buildings in the middle of the night.”
Damn. Violet was not playing around. DI Carlson’s face paled for a minute, then he found his voice once more.
“I know you think you’re a pretty good amateur detective, but I know how you frogs work,” he said. Seriously? People still used ‘frog’ as an insult against French people? “This is my case, and you stay away from it. There’s nothing here. I don’t want you going around sticking your nose in police business, pretending you’re some hotshot who knows better than a twenty-two-year veteran of the force.”
Violet shrugged and sat down. “Fine. Do not say that I did not warn you.”
“Lady, if I find you interfering in my cases, you’ll be sorry,” he said, evidently upset that Violet hadn’t taken his warning seriously. She laughed in reply.
“Oh, I am sorry,” she said a moment later. “Was that supposed to be a threat?”
“It was,” DI Carlson growled at her. “If you know what’s good for you, stay out of this. It isn’t a murder, and I don’t want some foreigner going around making trouble for me. Now, I’ve had enough of this. I’m warning you: stay out of this.”
And with that, DI Carlson stormed out of my makeshift room. Violet shook her head.
“I cannot stand people who are too lazy or stupid to do their job properly.”
“You’re sure it’s attempted murder then?” Jake asked, and Violet simply gave him a look. “Ok, you’re sure!” he said, raising his hands up in front of him.
“Do you know him, this DI Carlson?” Violet asked, and Jake nodded.
“As you’ve discovered for yourself, he isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. He’s old-school, and uh, I suspect whoever called it in mentioned that it was a suicide, otherwise I imagine they would have at least put a Detective Chief Inspector on the case. Or anyone else, really.”
“Well that is not promising.”
“No, I can’t say it is. If she ends up coming my way I can try and have her assigned to me; if I label it a homicide then the police will be forced to investigate.”
“Thank you,” Violet said to Jake.
“No problem. As much as your bedside manner could use some refining, you do tend to be right about these things.”
“I am always right about these things,” Violet corrected. “Besides, there is nothing wrong with my bedside manner.”
“Opening with how much of an idiot the guy was probably didn’t do you any favors.”
“Fake flattery is pointless. It was obvious the woman had not tried to kill herself; I looked at her for maybe thirty seconds and I already knew that.”
“Flattery is what got Cassie that burger that she’s apparently trying to eat in a single bite,” Jake said, grinning at me.
“Hey!” I tried to argue, but with my mouth full of delicious cheeseburger, it came out as more of an angry grunt; I wasn’t exactly painting myself in the best light.
“I do not do flattery, I do facts,” Violet replied haughtily. “If the man was too ignorant to understand what I was saying to him, well, that is not my fault. At any rate, I now have an attempted murder to investigate, as it appears that if I do not do it, then no one else will.”
Chapter 3
Just after three-thirty that morning, I woke up to the sound of the woman next door’s heart rate monitor alarm going off once more. I was groggy, but I still was able to register the sound of the paddles jolting the woman’s heart one, two, three, four times before finally the monitor let out a single steady beep indicating a flatline.
The woman had died. My heart sank at the realization that Violet was now investigating a murder.
I fell back asleep soon afterwards, and by the time I woke up Violet was sitting in the chair, texting away.
“Ah, good, you are awake,” Violet said. “Brianne will be here soon.”
“I assume you saw your strangulation victim died last night?”
“I did,” Violet nodded sadly. “It is too bad, if she had woken up and was able to tell us what had happened, it would have been an easy solution to the case. But of course, my hopes were not high when she crashed twice within twenty minutes.”
“How do you know Brianne is coming? You don’t have her number, do you?”
“I have hacked into the websites of government departments in the past, do you really think the password on your phone was going to stop me?”
“Figures,” I muttered in reply. I wasn’t exactly annoyed; I’d learned a while ago that password-protecting something wasn’t enough to keep it from Violet. Brianne had come to visit me the night before, when her shift had started. A medical student from Australia, most of her practical work took place here at the Royal London Hospital.
“Cassie! Violet! Good morning!” Brianne said as she swept away the curtain and entered the room with a cheery smile. Brianne more than made up for her short stature by being huge in energy. I was pretty sure she was nearing the end of a ten-hour overnight shift, but that wasn’t going to stop her.
“Good morning, Brianne,” Violet said. “Thank you for not mentioning that visiting hours do not start for another two hours.”
“Would it have made a difference if I had?” she drawled in her Australian accent, shooting Violet a grin.
“No, but it is polite of you all the same.”
“Now, as much as I’m glad to see Cassie’s doing all right this morning, I figure you probably have something more important you want me to take care of?”
“Yes, please,” Violet said. “I need you to find out everything you can about the woman who was in the bed next door, who died early this morning.”
“Oh, that’s so sad,” Brianne said, shaking her head. “Her name was Amelia W
aters, and apparently she hung herself.”
“She did not hang herself,” Violet said. “She was murdered.”
“So that’s why you want her information,” Brianne nodded, understanding. “I suppose the police will be by shortly to get her things, then?”
“The policeman in charge of this case seems to have a lower IQ than the glass of water by Cassie’s bed,” Violet explained. “He is convinced that it is a suicide, whether out of laziness, stupidity, or some sort of grotesque combination of both I am not yet certain. But regardless, the police will not be by for her things, not soon, anyway. In so far as they believe–until the autopsy is complete–young Miss Waters killed herself.”
“Yikes,” Brianne said. “Ok, so you need the information since the police aren’t going to care.”
“Exactly.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Brianne?” I asked.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t do anything that will actually get you into trouble,” I warned. She flashed me a grin in reply and left, and I shook my head. Brianne was always happy to be involved in Violet’s cases in whatever way she could, and I hoped it wouldn’t get her in trouble with the university.
“When she gets back it’ll be time for you to check out, seeing as you haven’t died overnight,” Violet said.
“Do I have time to eat breakfast first?”
About ten minutes later Brianne came rushing back into my makeshift room, carrying a big brown box full of clothes and other personal effects.
“This is all she had on her when she was brought in,” Brianne explained. “Now, I have to get going, I’m not off shift yet. I’ll be back to get this in about fifteen minutes; I don’t think I can get away with explaining why it’s missing for longer than that.”
“Thank you, Brianne. You have been very helpful,” Violet told her, and Brianne grinned.
“Anything I can do! Solving a murder sounds exciting!”
“Too exciting, a lot of the time,” I said, and Brianne laughed as she left the room once more.
Violet pounced on the plain brown box like a cat having just found some prey.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t too much information to be found in the box. The woman had been wearing a plain black skirt and a red blouse when she was found, both of which had been cut off her, along with a pair of plain black socks, and a matching set of lacy bra and panties. There was a watch as well, a mid-range one, engraved at the back. “Love you, duckie. Mum & Dad.” She also had a pair of nice sapphire earrings, a pair of studs.
My heart immediately sank for the parents who were most likely receiving the worst news a parent can get; I wondered why they weren’t already here. When they had called my mom in the middle of the night to tell her I was in the hospital, she’d apparently broken every traffic law on the books to make it to the emergency room in under twenty minutes.
Violet also pulled out a copy of the girl’s intake form, which she passed over to me after looking at it. This definitely had more information on it. For one thing, the address where she was found was listed, in Soho.
“Soho… that’s pretty expensive, isn’t it?” I asked Violet, who nodded.
“Definitely. It is in West London, practically right in the city.”
I read over the report quickly. It stated that the woman was found unresponsive by her flatmate, but that she still had a weak pulse. He immediately dialled 9-9-9, and the ambulance brought her here to the Royal London.
Apart from that, I hadn’t learned anything else about Amelia Waters.
“Great,” I said, putting the form back in the box. “That was kind of useless, apart from the home address.”
“Oh, I would not quite say that,” Violet said with a small smile.
“Even you couldn’t get much out of this box, surely!” I exclaimed.
“It is true, it was not the most enlightening box of personal effects through which I have looked in hopes of gathering information, but it also was not useless. We now know that Amelia Waters lives in Soho, but that she is originally from the East Midlands, most likely Nottinghamshire. She does not come from a rich family, but most likely middle to upper-middle class. However, she does have a very rich boyfriend.”
“Ok, I give up,” I said. “How did you get all of that from what was in that box?”
“The address where she was found was listed on the intake form. It is in Soho, and nobody commits suicide outside of their own home, except possibly in a hotel room, and I know the address, it is a residential building. Even an amateur murderer would know not to kill his victim and string her up away from her home. The watch has an engraving on it, which shows she is from the East Midlands, where ‘duckie’ is commonly used as a term for affection.”
“Well, at least I couldn’t have known that one,” I replied, feeling a little bit less like an idiot. After all, I’d only lived in London for six months, I could hardly be expected to master the linguistic individualities of all the regions of England.
“You also have not made observation your way of life for the past twelve or so years,” Violet said to me with a smile. “It would, quite frankly, reflect quite badly on me if you were able to detect everything as well as I have. Looking at her clothing, it is obvious that she did not come from a rich family, but not a poor one, either. The brands are decent–her skirt is Tommy Hilfiger and the blouse is from Ralph Lauren, so they cost a little bit, but not an extravagant amount. The clothes are of good quality, but they were also not a regular purchase; the skirt has been re-hemmed a couple of times, rather than thrown out and a new one purchased.”
“But what about the rich boyfriend?” I asked.
“The earrings,” Violet replied matter-of-factly.
“They are pretty nice,” I said, picking them out of the box and looking at them once more. Even in the clinical fluorescent light of the hospital the jewels glittered.
“They are from Tiffany and cost nearly two thousand pounds.”
I let out a yelp and tossed them back into the box, making Violet laugh. “Just because you have held them does not mean you have to pay for them.”
I wasn’t exactly struggling for money, not after a multi-million-dollar payout from the insurance company of the man who had hit me with his car and ended my career, but years of being raised by a single mom and trying to make my way through medical school with as little debt as possible meant that mentally, I was still pretty frugal.
“Two thousand pounds?” I asked, amazed. “Man, the guy must have really liked her.”
Violet nodded. “Or, as is more likely, he was the kind of man for whom two thousand pounds was nothing. After all, it was likely a new relationship.”
“You can’t know that,” I said, exasperated.
“He has bought her new earrings but not yet bought her new clothes? That is a sign of a relationship closer to infancy than long-term.”
“Maybe they’ve broken up and she just kept the earrings,” I suggested, but Violet shook her head.
“No, the earrings are from a new collection, and she would not be wearing them if the breakup was recent.”
Everything Violet said made perfect sense. “So, let’s go down to Soho and see if a man wearing a suit that costs more than my yearly rent answers the door,” I replied.
“Good, then you are ready to leave the hospital,” Violet said with a smile.
I hopped out of the bed and prepared myself for discharge while Violet gathered everything back into the box to give back to Brianne.
Chapter 4
Forty minutes later Violet and I were standing in front of Ted’s Grooming Room, the barber shop at the street level of number 42 Berwick Street, the address to which the paramedics had been called to find Amelia Waters’ body.
A convenience store on the corner had the day’s main headlines in the window: “The Terrible Trio Rob Diamond Shop” was the main headline of The London Post-Tribune. Below it, however, The Sun had a different headline: �
�Media Magnate Used Nightshade to Murder.”
“You never told me the case you solved involved a media mogul!” I said to Violet as we walked down the street.
“You never asked,” she replied with a small smile. “Besides, I do not think it is quite fair to call him a media mogul anymore, as the son of Edward Cornwall will not be in charge of anything apart from latrine duty at Pentonville Prison for the foreseeable future.”
Violet, rather than picking the lock of the building in broad daylight, with dozens of people around, pressed the buzzer for apartment number 3, where Amelia had been found.
“Yes,” answered a man’s voice a moment later, and Violet raised her eyebrows at me.
“Hello, my name is Violet Despuis, I’m a detective investigating what happened to Amelia Waters. Would you mind letting me and my colleague up, please?”
“Of course,” the man replied, and a moment later the door buzzed, indicating the lock was opened. We stepped into the building and made our way up a set of narrow, musty stairs. If I had asthma, I’d be reaching for my inhaler right about now.
“If she had a rich boyfriend, he certainly wasn’t paying her rent,” I panted as we made our way up the stairs. A single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling above lit the way; I felt like this was some kind of scene at the beginning of a horror movie, where they show the first two victims before something terrifying comes out and kills them.
Luckily, however, Violet and I made it all the way to the top floor without being eaten by aliens, and when she knocked on the solid, but ancient-looking wooden door, the man who answered almost immediately was definitely not rich.
Ok, so maybe I was jumping to conclusions. But the man standing in front of us, looking to be in his early twenties, was wearing boxers and a ragged grey tank top. His black hair was messy, as he ran a hand through it, and he was squinting at us as if he’d just gotten up. “You’re the investigators?” he asked, motioning for us to come in, which we did. The apartment was sparse to say the least. What furniture there was obviously came from Ikea, and the place looked like it hadn’t seen a paintbrush or a contractor since the seventies, at least. This might have been one of the fancier neighborhoods in London, but this particular apartment wouldn’t be getting any design awards anytime soon.
Strangled in Soho Page 2